Music Piracy: Not such a real problem after all

Published 06/04/2015 By
Aleksander Nordgarden-Rødner

It should be no surprise to you, my readers, that I believe the claims of piracy by the recording and movie industries are weak. Likewise, I have made my views on the way the content industry tries to score points very clear.Further, it should be no surprise that I think that a content creator who wants to ensure that they get revenues from their content, should be the bestprovider of it, or at least facilitate legal services that their target group can use.

That last point, recently got another, kind of surprising proponent: the Norwegian office of IFPI. In a recent survey, they asked Norwegian respondents under the age of 30 whether they illegally downloaded. In a 2009 survey, a massive 80% answered yes to that question. Compare that to the 2014 numbers; 4% say that they do. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.

Managing Director of IFPI Norway, Marte Thorsby, commented:

“We are now offering services that are both better and more user-friendly than illegal platforms… In [the past] five years, we have virtually eliminated illegal file sharing in the music industry.”

That is pretty clear; make your product accessible, user-friendly and affordable, and see what happens; piracy is reduced, while revenues increase. This proves a point that many have made before me; the threat of legal action has little to no effect on piracy. Economic incentives (user-friendliness and accessibility count among those) has a massive effect.